Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether his Department has plans to restart carbon capture and storage projects in the UK.

The Government’s ‘Ten point plan for a green industrial revolution’ sets out an ambition to deploy CCUS at scale in 2 of the UK’s industrial clusters by the mid-2020s, and a further 2 by 2030. Phase-1 of the cluster sequencing process looked to identify and sequence CCUS clusters which are suited to deployment in the mid-2020s. On 19th October the Government announced that Hynet and East Coast Cluster have been confirmed as Track-1 clusters for the mid-2020s and will be taken forward into negotiations. We also announced the Scottish Cluster as a reserve cluster.

Phase-2 of this process will determine which emitter projects within, or able to connect to, the chosen cluster locations will receive government support. The Government will continue to engage with the Scottish Cluster throughout Phase-2 of the sequencing process, to ensure it can continue its development and planning.

The Government has committed to supporting four clusters to deployment by 2030 at the latest, and have confirmed in the Net Zero Strategy that the Government will look to deploy 10Mt of annual CO¬2 capture capacity through these additional ‘Track-2’ clusters, helping to achieve the Government’s 2030 capture ambition of 20-30Mtpa.